The present invention relates in general to digital media distribution services in wireless cellular networks, and, more specifically, to distributing digital media in which each item of content includes multiple rated versions to enable parental control over the viewing of explicit material while maintaining an efficient and flexible distribution system.
Over network distribution of digital media content, especially for full track songs, is a fast growing segment of wireless telecommunication services. Such services can use a pay-as-you-go model wherein a user pays for each individual download or may use a subscription model wherein the user pays a periodic fee for the ability to perform downloads. Digital media items distributed within these types of distribution services can comprise compressed music tracks (e.g., MP3 or AAC encoded songs), wallpaper graphics, and game executable files.
A digital media distribution service must serve the needs of many different types of users who access the service with many different types of terminal devices (e.g., different models of cellular handsets). Particular media items offered for distribution are often adapted to these different types of users and/or devices by providing a plurality of different versions of a media item.
When media items are to be provided which contain inappropriate material for children, it is desirable to establish parental control to protect children from exposure to the explicit or otherwise inappropriate material. Potentially objectionable material may take the form of explicit lyrics in music tracks, mature images within wallpapers, and mature themes, graphic images, or explicit dialog in games. Thus, content providers creating the material often make various mitigated versions of the media items having the explicit material removed or altered in order to attract buyers who would object to the full version.
On the other hand, a proliferation of versions may be undesirable because subscribers may find a media distribution service to be overly confusing when presented with several versions of each particular media item. Subscribers may make errors in the selection thereby receiving the wrong version, and/or it may be difficult for a parent to monitor which versions are being downloaded. Once a full, unmitigated version has been downloaded, it typically becomes viewable or listenable by anyone possessing the device, thereby making it more difficult to loan a device from a parent to a child without having to first remove or defeat reproduction of the objectionable media item.
Media items may also need to be distributed in multiple versions in order to adapt them to different digital media devices or terminals, such as cellular handsets. Many different models of handsets are available with a wide range of hardware capabilities. In particular, each different model of mobile handset has a very specific and unique configuration for playing or reproducing audio. Some devices have one speaker while others have two speakers. Some models with two speakers can provide true stereo while others lack the proper speaker placement or characteristics to generate true stereo. A similar situation occurs with respect to downloading wallpaper files because screen size or color depth capabilities likewise vary from device to device.
The size, location, and type of speakers vary widely so that a particular music file optimized for the sound characteristics of one device would not provide acceptable performance when played on many others of the devices that the subscriber may have. To avoid undesirable complexity (i.e., an inordinate number of versions) in the distribution of music tracks, prior art music file distribution services for cellular handsets have offered just one version of a music file wherein fairly bland audio characteristics are employed so that the file provides listenable reproduction (i.e., okay but not great sound) across all potential terminal devices but may not be optimized for any single device. Furthermore, the bland equalization of the music means that the audio quality obtained on a device with better than average characteristics will be much worse than it could be. Additionally, the audio characteristics on a single device may change with time, such as when the user switches from external speakers to a headphone.
In addition to the foregoing problems, the need to advertise different versions within the distribution service is cumbersome to the service provider. Furthermore, the appearance of the service becomes cluttered and the locating of desired media items is more difficult. At the same time, the network transport bandwidth used to support download and the media storage capacity of the terminal devices have both been underutilized.